Читать книгу: «The American Missionary. Volume 42, No. 08, August, 1888», страница 2
*THE LONDON MISSIONARY CONFERENCE.*
This large and important gathering of the friends of Christian missions throughout the world, held its session in Exeter Hall, London, June 9-19.
This is the fourth great Missionary Conference. The first was in Liverpool in 1860, the last was in London, held ten years ago. This Conference far surpassed its predecessors in the numbers present, in the completeness of the previous arrangements, and in the range and importance of the topics discussed. The members numbered over 1,200, gathered from all parts of the world. Nearly forty American Societies were represented, six Canadian, fifteen Continental, and fifty-four English, Scotch and Irish Societies.
One topic that received deserved attention was the curse of deluging Africa with liquor by Christian nations, and the continued curse of the opium traffic which England inflicts upon China.
From the brief reports which have reached us, we judge this Conference to have been a very able and enthusiastic one, and that it will probably give a new impulse to Christian missions throughout the world.
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Secretary Beard represented the American Missionary Association in the London Missionary Conference, agreeably to appointment by the American Committee of the Conference. His paper was entitled, "Christian Missions among the North American Indians." He also read a paper which Secretary Strieby had prepared, by appointment of the American Committee, on "The Freedmen of America as Factors in African Evangelization." Dr. Beard attended the Conference on his way to Europe to bring his family home. He is expected to return about the first of September.
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*GETTYSBURG, FRATERNITY, FREE BALLOT.*
The meeting of the Blue and the Gray on the field of Gettysburg at the late anniversary celebration marks an era in national fraternity. The orator of the day, George William Curtis, did a noble, perhaps we might say courageous, deed in lifting the enthusiasm of the glad hour above the remembrance of past heroism and present harmony to the great duty of the nation—a free and fair ballot. A few lines culled from the oration will give the thought.
"The suffrage is the mainspring, the heart of our common life. If ignorance and semi-barbarous dominance be fatal to civilized communities, no less so is constant and deliberate defiance of law."
"No honest man can delude himself with the theory that this is a local question. If there be a national question, which vitally interests every American citizen from the Penobscot to the Rio Grande, it is the question of a free legal ballot."
"Can we wrest from the angel of this hour any blessing so priceless as the common resolution that we shall not have come to this consecrated spot only to declare our joy and gratitude, nor only to cherish proud and tender memories, but also to pledge ourselves to union in its sublimest significance?"
To this we add: The brave deeds of the soldier at Gettysburg, and the wise counsels of the orator, should be followed by the patient toil of the teacher and the preacher. It is hard to choose between the ballot withheld and the ballot cast by ignorance and vice. Blood and treasure flowed like water in the war. Shall treasure and toil be wanting for the work of peace—preparing the ignorant voter to cast the free ballot intelligently and honestly?
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*A BOOM IN THE PRICE OF A SLAVE.*
One of our best educated and most efficient colored ministers in the South furnishes us the following sketch of his experience on the auction block. He not only was sold "early and often," but always at advancing prices. We do not wonder at this, for he has shown himself to be so valuable as a man, that we are sure the boy must have promised to be worth a great deal as a slave.
I was sold in 1862 at the age of ten years, for $400, by the widow B. of Virginia. As a rule, after the first sale, I was upon the auction block every day for three months. How often I was sold during those three months I cannot tell, but on Davis' auction block in his sale-room I was sold five times in one day. The last sale at the end of the three months was made in Tennessee, to the Rev. H.F.S., a Baptist minister, who paid $3,500 for his property. The Rev. Mr. S. was a "Yankee" from Philadelphia, Pa., and came South at the breaking out of the war.
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*EXTRACTS FROM EXAMINATION PAPERS.*
Ques. Give a rule for the use of the period?
Ans. Every period must begin with a capital.
Ans. A period is a dot written to the end of a sentence and is used to low the voice.
Ans. A period is used for the topage of a sentence and to make our reading sound better than if we had no period.
Ques. What is the chief occupation in the South Atlantic States?
Ans. The ocoopations cold in the north part, but in the lower part rain seldom fails.
FROM A SUNDAY-SCHOOL
The lesson was on The Ten Virgins, and the next Sunday the review question was asked, "What was the lesson about last Sunday?" and a bright boy gave the prompt answer, "About ten gals that went to a weddin."
COMPOSITION LETTERS FROM YOUNG PUPILS
My dear teacher, God be with you witch I know he will, as the Song says God can see me every day when I work and when I play. again God is always near me when I pray. I shall nor for get Miss H. her name shall never die out Christ have mercy upon her If God calls her I will spect to meet her in heven at the last trumpet shall sound. I will be thair. Yours truly,
Robert –
Dear teacher, I wish I could write good. I have not done my duty. I will try the next time and do better. I am very sorry. I will try and do better. May God help me to obey my teacher. Miss F. is sick. I hope she will get better. I will try to be like Jesus. I have sign the pledge and have kept it. Now I will close my bad lines. I hope you will come back next year. Good by.
Your aff Scholar,
James –
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*ON JAMES POWELL'S PORTRAIT.*
BY J.E. RANKIN, D.D
O face, all radiant with the light of love,
O eyes, so laughing in their tenderness,
So quick to read the language of distress;
O lips, so touched with flame as from above,
O man, with godhead stamped upon thy brow,
And manhood beating in thy pulses strong,
To stir thee up to stamp thy heel on wrong,
That earth should have no more thy pattern now!
No more should see thee on the wings of mercy sent!
Thou hads't thy mortal years so wisely spent,
That Heavën seemed too soon to crown thy brow;
The veil of flesh was prematurely rent,
And earthly glory with celestial blent.
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A college commencement is a marked event to all parties concerned, and a good sketch of such an occasion furnishes interesting reading to a very wide circle. We call the attention of our patrons to the reports we make of the anniversaries in our Southern institutions. Some of these reports appeared in the last MISSIONARY, some will be found in this number, and others will be given in the next.
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=THE SOUTH.=
*NOTES IN THE SADDLE.*
BY REV. C.J. RYDER, DISTRICT SECRETARY
Orthodoxy and orthography are by no means inseparable, as the following letter proves. Correct views of Divine Sovereignty and very indifferent spelling may go together in the same epistle.
"Dear Miss –
"Dear Teacher, I am so much Thank you for your kindness of the medicine which you have sent to me yesterday, until I cannot express my gladness and feeling unto you in this world, but I hope God will take good care off you even on death if I never have the plegure of seeing your good and happy looking face any more.
"Your medicine has help me demegiately as I have took it. I hope God will ever to be with in your Jerney throught life in well doing."
This letter came from a young lad in one of the lower grades of school work. He had been seriously sick for weeks, and the teacher to whom he wrote sat with him and ministered to his comfort after the weary hours of her school work were over. This lad appreciated her self-forgetful kindness; his heart was touched, and as she left the malarial atmosphere of this Southern country for brief rest in her Northern home, this boy sent her this letter. His letter is "phonetic" and of the individual type, but I venture that the tearful prayer going up to God from his grateful, loving, simple heart may reach the Father's ear, and bring down a blessing upon his loving friend as "demegiately" as the rounded periods of learned lips. He evidently is no dusky Claudius whose confession must be:
"My words fly up, my thoughts remain below;
Words without thoughts never to Heaven go."
"What a privilege it is to be prayed for by such confiding souls," said the teacher as she handed me this letter.
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Speaking of prayer among the colored people, calls to mind a petition offered for myself, when Field Superintendent, soon after my appointment. An old black woman in New Orleans was called upon to pray, after I had spoken to the people. She chanted her words in soft, melodious tones, keeping time with her body swaying back and forth, as she prayed. She prayed for the former superintendent, Dr. Roy. She thanked God for his patient, loving care of the people. She told the Lord how he went as a prophet of Israel, back and forth among them, bringing the bread of Heaven to their hungry souls. She sought Divine blessing, rich, full, free, upon him and all his loved ones. Then she chanted in the liquid accent of the Creole, "And now, O Father, bless our young brother the new superintender. Let him down deep into the treasury of thy word and hide him 'hind de cross of Jesus." And the heart of the "New Superintender" said "Amen and Amen." That experience was what he needed.
How close to the great throbbing heart of God these simple children of cotton-field and cabin come! In gaining intimate acquaintance with them one is reminded of Heinrich Heine's confession in his notes on Uncle Tom's Cabin:
"Astonishing! That after I have whirled about all my life over all the dance floors of philosophy, and yielded myself to all the orgies of the intellect * * * without satisfaction, like Massolina after a licentious night, I now find myself on the same standpoint where poor Uncle Tom stands—on that Bible. I kneel down by my black brother in the same prayer! What humiliation! * * * Tom, perhaps, understands these spiritual things better than I. * * * But a poor negro slave reads with his back and understands better than we do. But I, who used to make citations from Homer, now begin to quote the Bible as Uncle Tom does. Poor Tom, indeed, seems to have seen deeper things in the Holy Book than I."
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The letter quoted at the opening of these "Notes" hints another thing. The A.M.A. teacher must frequently be a doctor, too. One lady teacher in Alabama opened her chest of medicine and showed me a small drug store curtained off from the sitting-room of her home. She had made materia medica, a special study, and was a competent physician in common diseases. Her house was a public dispensary, visited frequently by her afflicted colored neighbors. What cannot these teachers accomplish going out into these dark, diseased and sin-smitten places of our own land, if only they go out in "His Name" as they so often do!
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How all loyal hearts will rejoice in the good news that comes from brave Lawrence's sick room! He is slowly improving, and there is strong hope of his recovery. Thank God!!
A large public meeting has been held in Jellico, Tenn., in which the "law-abiding citizens," expressed their intense condemnation of this "brutal, but cowardly act of shooting Prof. Lawrence." This body of citizens voted to prosecute the scoundrel Chandler, who did the shooting, and raised the money at once to carry forward that prosecution! Good for Jellico, say we all!! Will Iowa permit Tennessee to surpass her in the execution of whiskey murderers?
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"The Pansy Society," consisting of a company of seven girls and boys, sent to the New England office of the A.M.A. $13 which they had themselves earned! What society of young people will be "next"? Here is a work, especially a children's and young people's work, for establishing schools, planting Sabbath schools, sending missionaries into homes to teach the Ninety thousand mothers in a single Southern State who cannot read! In a company of fifty children, the A.M.A. teacher asked: "How many of you ever knelt at your mother's knee, or at all in your home, and prayed?" Not a single hand went up in all that company! "Children's work for children;" "Mother's work for mothers," are watchwords of the A.M.A., that should awaken enthusiastic response and greatly increase the benefactions of all toward this effort to Christianize the homes of our land!
